I’m quite sure that the kick-off times for all games have been scheduled before the tournament and never changed during it. The fans, local authorities and broadcasters all need that certitude.
Tomorrow’s game starts at 4:00 PM Buenos Aires time, at work we’ve successfully lobbied our boss to let us work from home, the corporate directive was “go to work and leave at 1 PM” but many of us have a 2 hour commute and that’s cutting it too fine, considering that starting about 3 PM no buses, trains or subways can be counted on to work (you can film an apocalyptic movie in Buenos Aires when Argentina plays a semifinal, there’s nobody in the streets and no cars, as if an eerie disaster had killed everyone).
Though on the other hand, I think that FIFA tweaked the start times of group stage matches once the matchups were known to be amenable to TV watchers. Japan, in particular as I remember it, got some match times that would work well (or at least OK) in their home time zone. Probably SK-AUS-NZ as well.
Definitely. The kick-off times for all German games were also watcher-friendly.
How do you know? How does anybody know? There is nobody there who could report it, they are all watching TV.
Here’s a way to avoid getting spoiler texts:
It is getting pretty hard to avoid spoilers these days. Not only do you have avoid texts, but also completely avoid the internet and TV. Even ads will have spoilers. I remember after one of the past Super Bowls, the minute the game was over, I was seeing an ad on a random website to buy souvenir gear with the winning team on it.
It’s all based on reports from foreigners.
That would maybe apply if I used an evil…I mean an iPhone 
. Unfortunately it is not texts that I would be receiving it is a specific messaging app that my family uses, and one I need to check on things when I’m away from the house so that I buy whatever is needed there. Since for part of the game I will not be at home…and I won’t return until much much after the match is over…ah well. For the final at least, that won’t be a problem.
//i\\
Do you all also have some concrete, but mundane memory of a short moment in your childhood? One of mine is riding my bike home in the afternoon on the match day of the legendary WC game in 1978 of Germany-Austria, the “Schmach von Cordoba”, “The Disgrace of Cordoba”. I was a bit late and the game had already been kicked off when I was still on my street where our house was, a usually very busy and important federal road (Bundestraße). It was empty. There were no cars, trucks bikes or pedestrians anywhere. It was so unusual and poignant that I remember it vividly to this day. I was ten at the time.
It happened to me, but as an adult, in the 2014 final, I was too late getting out of my house to go to my father’s were the family was gathering to see the match and there were already almost no buses/subways running, by some miracle I got there only 15 minutes late or so and was a witness to complete stillness and silence.
I have had similar experiences during the Super Bowl.
In Foxboro, during Pats playoff games a few stray shoppers would proudly post on Facebook about how they had gone to empty stores during the game to buy things. (one of several thousand reasons I ditched Facebook)
What specifically about that annoyed you?
Hard to say. Many thanks rankle me as I get older, though.
It’s the smugness, “I am not a stupid fan like you, so I can go annoy innocent shopkeepers that want to concentrate on the game”
Beatriz Sarlo, luminary of Argentine literary critics used to do something like that, saying that she “took advantage of the opportunity” to go to museums and the like.
It mostly made her the target of good natured jokes.
On the other hand Borges hated football too, famously saying "Football is popular because stupidity is popular.”
Other deep thinkers deeply loved football, like Albert Camus, who once said (my paraphrase) “Everything I know about life I learned from football”. He was a goalie.
ETA: it’s interesting how many important people have been competitive goalies: Niels Bohr , Karol Wojtyla, Julio Iglesias…
Borges was not particularly in love with anything “popular”, he was an aristocrat.
Other Argentinians writers loved/love football and some have written masterpieces using it as a setting, particularly Eduardo Sacheri, Osvaldo Soriano and Roberto Fontanarrosa.
ETA: And Hernán Casciari!
Yeah, that’s it. Doing it isn’t smug; posting about it on a broad FB community is. Thank you.
If a tree falls in Buenos Aires during a World Cup semi-final, does it make a sound?
Depends on wether Borges, Beatriz Sarlo or some foreigner is there to hear it 